It’s a sorry tale that when I see the National Science Foundation’s logo, “NSF”, my immediate reaction is, “Not Safe For what?!” I’m more disgusted with me than you could ever be. The letters come up via a game created as an educational tool called Immune Attack. It’s a Fantastic Voyage-style (oh heck, I’m young enough to want to call it “an Inner Space-style) exploration game as you fly about inside the human body, interacting with things on a cellular level.

It’s a shame it’s been made with 300 year old tech – this could have looked all kinds of incredible if built with a more recent engine – but its purposes aren’t to dazzle my idiot eyes, but rather learn things about biology.

“You must navigate a nanobot through a 3D environment of blood vessels and connective tissue in an attempt to save an ailing patient by retraining her non-functional immune cells. Along the way, you will learn about the biological processes that enable macrophages and neutrophils – white blood cells – to detect and fight infections.”

There’s a trailer here too, but I’m a little concerned by their use of the word “alien”. Unless this game was made by a Federation of American Scientists from another planet that also happens to have an America. I’m pretty sure that’s what it is.

Not in the trailer they don’t. Although I must admit I did for a moment think John might have been making a really weak joke about how far his reading ability had been corrupted by gaming as a follow up to his NSF remark.

However after watching the trailer I agree with HexagonalBolts. They’re using alien in the sense of unfamilar/not part of normal experience.

I was at a conference/seminar thing recently which included some ‘serious’ games, including one designed as a triage simulator – that is, identify the worst wounded, perform an evaluation checklist, and mark their urgency, etc. It was actually pretty graphically advanced, and their demonstration footage of 3d guy bleeding to death from a head wound (that is, from head only, with facial expressions, realistic blood flow rate, skin pallor etc changing) was genuinely spooky.

There’s nowt wrong with that engine, you can still go back to the original Half Life even now.

But that design, now there’s a thing. I’d be happy as Larry swimming about in my little gut-sub if they’d just let me do so for about five fucking seconds without having to click on a pop up window, or having Major MacWhateverthefuck telling me that a new pop up message has appeared that needs urgent attention.